


Winter, '77 (Before the War)

by letsgogetlost, thewindupbird



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2034324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letsgogetlost/pseuds/letsgogetlost, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewindupbird/pseuds/thewindupbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a while he wondered  if that meant his feelings were something else entirely until he  finally tired of trying to liken the things he did and felt to that of  everyone else and just chalked it up to the fact that he was a bit of  an oddball, and as long as his parents never found out, he would be  all right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter, '77 (Before the War)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of something bigger.

Evan burst into the Slytherin Common Room late one evening, pink-faced from the cold and looking rather wind-blown. He’d been out  with Rabastan and Avery and some other boys watching them play  Quidditch despite none of them being on the team. That had only lasted a short while  before someone (Rabastan) ticked someone else off, as he was apt to do, and  ended up the losing party of a two-boy battle which rapidly became  three boys, and then four, until someone shoved snow down the back of  someone else’s back and everyone forgot what the hostility had been  about in the first place.

  Evan was sure that this was not what his father had in mind when he  imagined his son carrying out the family tradition of composed,  well-educated Slytherins. In fact, Evan was sure that a lot of things  about him were not what his father expected, and truly, it was  difficult to care about these sorts of things at all when he was  fighting valiantly for the half-hazard sides of what was surely  Slytherin House’s most prolific snowball fight ever to be seen at  Hogwarts. Not when he had his arms wrapped tightly around the waist of  dark-haired, too-serious Dolohov from behind, wrestling him into the  snow.  It was even harder to care when said too-serious Dolohov pinned him to  the cold ground and pressed down with his body to keep him there, but Evan  filed the image of those dark brown eyes and that heat away for later  and instead gasped “Uncle-uncle-uncle! Ouch! You’re on my hair!”  between gales of laughter.  

Now, still breathing hard, soaked and freezing, but delightfully tired  and happy, he spotted Selwyn – dark-haired, disheveled Brynyale Selwyn,  sitting alone at one of the green marble, circular tables, frowning  over his homework.   Evan came to a dead halt and stared, even as the other boys piled in  through the secret wall behind him, jostling him a bit on their way to  their dorms. Evan took a moment to collect himself, plastering a smile  on is face before he dropped elegantly – if not a little noisily  into the chair across from him.  

Selwyn finished the sentence he was writing, period and all, before he  looked up and grinned. “Hello. You look a mess.”

  Evan struggled out of his sodden mittens and ran his cold, red fingers  through his long hair. “Had a snowball fight,” he responded. “Really,  it was quite dangerous. Many lives were lost. And many mittens. I, of  course, fought valiantly and despite my dark and horrific memories of  the Snowball War of ’77, I remain a thoroughly respectable, emm,  respected gentleman.”  

“Well you look very refined,” Selwyn said, raising from his seat and  leaning across the table to pluck a twig from Evan’s hair.  

“Thank you,” Evan said, thankful that his slight breathlessness could  be attributed to his no doubt venerable efforts in the War. His smile,  however, had faded, as it always did when he was nervous. It had been  strange and confusing for a while as he observed people left and right  grinning like fools every time the object of their affection walked  into the same room. Selwyn, however, could wipe the smile off Evan’s  face faster than a sharp look from McGonagall. For a while he wondered  if that meant his feelings were something else entirely until he   finally tired of trying to liken the things he did and felt to that of  everyone else and just chalked it up to the fact that he was a bit of  an oddball, and as long as his parents never found out, he would be  all right.

Which was precisely why he never quite understood what  happened next, despite thinking about it quite often, which was that,  speaking very rapidly and faintly wildly he said: “Exactly. Exactly  right,” he began. “Which is precisely why I’ll be going to the Three  Broomsticks, it being Hogsmeade weekend. If you recall, the notice was  posted on the message board ages ago until Rabastan ate it on a dare,  but it was there, in the place where that hideous purple poster is now  about extra Divination Classes, as if anyone should want to take _those_ ,  in order to get myself a celebratory Butterbeer, or two, we musn’t be  too cautious, even though no one else seems to think I won which,  clearly, I did, and I know there’s no ‘I’ in team at all, but I  most certainly did all the work, therefore, a Butterbeer for my medal – and my mettle!” he added in a sudden burst of inspiration, and wisely, didn’t let himself take a breath before he continued because he would  have lost any of the mettle he claimed to have, just finishing as he  was running out of air with “and I was wondering, rather, if you  wouldn’t like to join me.”  

“Oh,” Selwyn said, with the air of a person recovering after coming in  from a walk in very strong winds. “Y-yeah, that would be nice.  Maybe we could forget it’s for your, you know, your indisputable  heroics in the Snowball War of ’77, though, so that I could understand  a bit more than half of what you’re talking about."

  “Oh, ah,” said Evan, his heart pounding rather wildly as he wondered  vaguely if he shouldn’t just call the whole thing off and ask Selwyn  instead if he wouldn’t very much mind fetching Madame Pomfrey in case he had a heart attack, but in yet another valiant effort (indeed, Evan though, how valiant could one  man be expected to be in a single afternoon?) he pushed that thought  aside and said, “Of course. Absolutely. I would never dream of making  the ah – the meeting – um, all about myself. After all a good soldier  never boasts.”

  “Quite right,” Selwyn said, with a nod and a slowly blooming smile, and Evan suddenly realised just how close their closed hands were upon  the table and just how long they’d been holding each other’s eyes.  Selwyn’s were the precise colour of the sea on the French Coast where  Evan had been on holiday last summer with his parents. He blinked and  drew back quite suddenly and climbed loudly to his feet, collecting his sodden mittens up from the tabletop. 

“See you then, em, then,” he said, wondering if he was going to use  all the disfluencies available to him in this very moment and, oh God,  they hadn’t even gotten to the Three Broomsticks yet.

  “Yes, see you,” Selwyn echoed. Evan waited for those three words  before he fled for the seventh year’s dorm toilet where he could be alone for a second. He could still feel  his cheeks burning as he ran his slightly shaking fingers though his  hair again, his body leaning back against the wood door and grinned,  suddenly, like a madman.  
  


The weekend couldn't come quickly enough.


End file.
